Oops! It Appears There's a Striking Flaw in That Claim About Detecting Alien Life

A team of astronomers announced this week that they've detected a possible sign of life on an exoplanet 124 light years away using the James Webb Space Telescope. Even more enticingly, the exoplanet, dubbed K2-12b, was already suspected to be an ocean world. The biosignature is a molecule called dimethyl sulfide. On Earth, it's exclusively produced by phytoplanktons and other microbes. Thus, the authors of the new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, maintain that the best explanation for the detection is that K2-12b is brimming with life. But the situation may not be so clear cut. While dimethyl sulfide is an organic material on our planet, there's a body of evidence suggesting that nonbiological processes elsewhere in the cosmos could produce the compound, notes science writer Corey S. Powell in a Bluesky thread. A study published this February reported a possible detection of dimethyl sulfide in the interstellar medium, the clouds of gas and dust found in the sp ... Read full article.